Architect: Joseph, Smitherm, and Joseph
No Interior Access
This was the single largest piece of urban renewal in Edwardian Dublin, and was commissioned by the Earl of Iveagh to clean up the slums that surrounded St Patrick's Cathedral of which he was funding the restoration. London architects Joseph, Smitherm, and Joseph designed the entire scheme. The centrepiece of the Trust scheme was the Iveagh Baths on Bride Street. A fine example of early Art Nouveau, the baths are brick set on a granite plinth, decorated with terracotta panels. Until its conversion in the 1990s, this contained a fully intact interior entered through a doorway surmounted by a copper clad dome. The interior has now been much altered but the exterior survives to be enjoyed.
Designed by the City Architect C.J. McCarthy and completed in 1904, the Bull Alley Corporation housing scheme was designed to complement the adjacent Iveagh Trust Scheme. These housing blocks are of five stories surmounted by copper domes over stairwells and ornate art nouveau details in the gable ends. The ground floor of the buildings was devoted to small shop units, most of which are still in use today.
The most dominant building on Bull Alley is the Vocational Education College (VEC) designed in a Flemish Renaissance style by L.A. McDonnell. Easily the best site in the Iveagh Trust scheme, its faces across the park to the Cathedral, the park itself was created by Lord Iveagh by removing existing slums which where built up to the side of the Cathedral. The building has fine stone carving and decoration and was recently restored and cleaned. Although Bull Alley is the name of one street, it has also come to mean the complete area of housing on Ross Road, Bride Street, and Bull Alley itself.